by Wendy Walker
Jonathan’s eyes light up. “What about that other girl? What was her name? Britney—the one from the party the night he was killed? His girlfriend for over a year. What if she was in love with him and blames you for taking that away from her?”
My head feels light suddenly as I see her face. Britney. Long blond hair. Big blue eyes. Puffy baby cheeks even at sixteen. I had never considered this. I never saw her again after that night.
“But why wait so long?”
Jonathan looks at the ground and shakes his head. His eyebrows scrunch together as he strains his brain for answers at one in the morning after scotch and sex and beer. And pizza. Half a pizza. Would he be able to eat if he wasn’t just who he says he is—Jonathan Fielding, divorced hedge fund manager whose car is in the shop?
I stare at him. I study him. I wait for an answer, but it doesn’t come.
I remember Dr. Brody explaining all of this to me. How this hole came to be, this defect. A child is told she is loved but then feels nothing. Tugging at a sleeve, waiting for a head to turn her way. Confusion is all she will ever know. And that’s exactly what I feel as I watch this man in front of me.
Nothing but confusion.
I have to get out of here. My mind turns to my keys, the ones that fell to the ground and that he picked up. What did he do with them?
I remember—he put them on the counter—and I start to turn my head that way.
But he looks up suddenly with a new thought.
“What about the guy from New York? What if this has nothing to do with the past—but the present?”
I stop in my tracks and confront this new absurdity.
“It doesn’t make sense. He dumped me. We haven’t been in touch for weeks.”
But Jonathan is not deterred.
“What if he expected you to do what you used to do—come back, do anything to make him love you again? Isn’t that what you said? Your pattern with wrong men?”
He speaks of these things as though we are lab partners conducting a science experiment. He speaks of them and they are punches to my gut, forcing the air out of my body with the violent strikes.
Maybe I’ve spoken of them the way he now does, with detachment as though it’s all in the past. As though I haven’t spent every minute of the past six hours wondering if I’m doing it again, right here and right now with him. And my God, is that all it’s been? Six hours? It feels like a lifetime that I’ve been with Jonathan Fielding.
He keeps on with his new theory about Dr. Kevin Brody, and I hate that I am even considering it. If Kevin was a wrong man, then I am truly lost. He said he loved me and he said it knowing every piece of me and how they all fit together in a broken heap. He had started to fix them. To fix me. The tables turned on my pattern of fixing broken men.
“I don’t know,” I say. “That would make him pretty crazy.”
Jonathan likes his new theory.
“People are crazy,” he says. “Haven’t you figured that out? No one is what they seem.”
I stare at him now. What is he trying to tell me? I think about his lurid voice telling me how he wanted to fuck me again. I think of the soft touch of his hands, and the sweet sighs when we did a drive-by in his bed. Yes, it was short, but it was sweet and passionate.
Wasn’t it? Wasn’t he?
Wasn’t Dr. Brody, when he told me he loved me?
Jonathan looks at my purse. “When did you last look in there?” he asks.
I take a moment, because he is moving too fast now. From theory to theory to pontifications about mankind and now to his Sherlock Holmes Q&A.
“Uh…” I stammer. “At the house. It’s Rosie’s purse. I borrowed it.”
He rubs his chin, thinking and thinking. Then he says, “Was it empty when she gave it to you?”
Where the hell are you going with this, Jonathan Fielding, the liar?
“I thought so,” I say. But I really don’t know.
“Did you get it yourself, or did she give it to you?”
Shit. Now he has me thinking absurd thoughts right along with him. I try to recall the exact series of events that led to my departure in Rosie’s dress, with the cherry-red lipstick that I put in the purse.… I can see it on the counter in the kitchen. Rosie and Joe were cooking. Mason was running around half naked, glee on his face. Gabe had left sometime earlier when I went up to get ready. There was laughter.… You could always hit up nursing homes next.… Haha, yes, he’s forty. Who had said it, Gabe or Joe? Joe, I think. It’s more like Joe to tease me that way.
Rosie brought the purse. I remember that now. She set it down on the kitchen counter, but I didn’t bring it with me because I had nothing upstairs that needed to go inside. Except the lipstick, which I carried in my hand when I came back down.
I opened the purse and shoved things in it—the lipstick in the kitchen, and then my wallet and other things from my purse I’d left in the car. I would have seen the note. I would have felt it.
Wouldn’t I?
“It was empty when I got it,” I tell him. But I’m not at all sure.
“Are you sure?” he asks, right on cue, like he’s just read my mind. Again.
I won’t think it. That note was not put in this purse by Rosie or Joe or Gabe.
How devious he is to make me question them. How ruthless. I feel my eyes narrow as I look at him.
“How about this for a theory: I left the purse in your car when I ran into the park. Remember?”
Silence descends. Jonathan stares. I stare back.
Then he breaks it. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the note was not in the purse when I left the house. I’m saying that I left it alone—with you. First in your car … and in this apartment,” I say, realizing this just now. “It’s been on the counter the whole time.”
“So you think I did this? That’s insane! I didn’t even know you before tonight. You said there were three notes, right? I saw you on the website a week ago—well after the first note was left on your windshield. Jesus Christ! I feel like we just drove off a cliff here.”
He walks away, starts cleaning things up. The pizza box to the fridge. The glasses to the sink.
“I can’t believe you just said that.” He doesn’t look at me.
And suddenly I’m the one who can’t believe I just said that.
The voice is so loud as it rumbles through my mind. This is why no one loves you. You are damaged and broken and no one ever will …
I told Dr. Brody that she wouldn’t listen—that little girl tugging on a sleeve. The face in that photo. That starving child who lives inside me. I told him and he told me that I was wrong. He told me it would all get better now that I knew the truth about my childhood.
But he told me a lot of things.
And the last thing, the worst of all.
I saved the text on my phone so I would never forget it. The text that ended everything between us.
I don’t love you. I love my wife. Please don’t contact me ever again.
I’m about to do what that starving child asks of me, to fix things with this man—with Jonathan Fielding. That is the only voice I hear now, and it is loud and desperate. I start to plot ways to make him believe I’m worthy. To trick him into thinking I’m not what I seem even though I’ve just accused him of something horrible.
“I’m sorry…” I say.
But the doorbell rings before I can go on.
He looks up, past me to the door. He’s frustrated and angry as he storms around the counter to the small entryway.
“It’s probably my neighbor,” he says. “We’re being too loud.”
He walks to the door as though he’s walked to it before, explaining why he and some woman are making too much noise in the middle of the night. He turns the locks, his mouth already forming an apology.
But then the door slams hard against him, pushed with extreme force from the outside as soon as the locks give way and he’s shown himself. He’s stunned as he falls
back against the wall and just as he leans forward, the door slams him a second time and he falls to the floor. It slams again, the hard metal of the bottom corner catching him right in the forehead.
I am perfectly still now, staring at Jonathan Fielding as his head bleeds. As the blood pools around his face.
I have been here before. I have seen this before.
I look to the door.
“Laura!”
It’s a man standing there. I don’t recognize him at first because he wears a baseball cap and a hoodie over it.
But then he looks up at me after he sees the damage he’s inflicted on his victim.
“Gabe?” I say. I am hallucinating. “Gabe?”
I say it again, but he has already moved into the apartment. He grabs the purse on the counter. Sees my keys beside them and puts them in his pocket.
Then he looks at me, head to toe.
“Where are your shoes?” But he finds them in the corner behind the door before I can answer.
“Did you have a coat?” he asks, and I shake my head, still staring at him in a daze.
My eyes find Jonathan Fielding and the small but growing pool of blood. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a sound. He lies in a fetal position right where he fell. A large gash exposes bone at the top of his head where the sharp edge of the door struck it just right.
Gabe sees me and stops looking for my things. He stands in front of me and blocks my view.
“Laura,” he says firmly. He waits until my eyes move, slowly, from the man on the floor, to find his eyes. “We have to get out of here. Right now!”
I have no words. I am back on that gravel road at the edge of the woods. A bat in my hand and a boy at my feet.
“Laura!” Gabe commands me now. He grabs my arm and starts to pull me toward the door.
My bare feet begin to move and I stumble behind him. Gabe blocks my line of sight until we are clear of the body. He pulls the door closed behind us.
And then we are gone.
THIRTY-NINE
Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 1:30 p.m. Branston, CT.
Rosie listened to Joe’s story, each and every sentence ushering forth memories that now had a new context.
I found out just before the summer, when my father died.…
Joe’s parents had lived in Maine for over a decade. She and Joe had started to see them twice a year after Mason was born. He liked the beach. Rosie liked having free babysitters. She had never cared for his parents. His mother was flighty and his father distant. Then, and now, right up until his father died last summer.
My mother found out when we were in ninth grade.… That’s why we moved.
Before they moved from the neighborhood, Mrs. Ferro was a frequent visitor to their kitchen, along with Mrs. Wallace. Rosie’s mother would serve the ladies coffee and they would speak about their husbands and their children. Their voices were at times exuberant and filled with laughter. At other times, hushed and tearful. Rosie had never wondered why Joe’s father rarely joined her father for beers on Sunday afternoons, or why the Ferros never came to their annual holiday party.
She didn’t want us to know—not ever. But my father left a note.…
All those years, the Ferros kept the secret.
And all those years, so did Rosie’s parents.
“Well,” Rosie said when Joe paused, “it explains why your mother always hated me. Why she didn’t want us to date and nearly had a stroke when we got married.”
Joe didn’t respond. He sat across from Rosie and stared at his hands, which were folded in a prayer at the table.
“Why did you tell Laura and not me?” That was the question of the hour.
Joe’s chest puffed up with air as he leaned back in his seat. He was stalling for time.
Rosie didn’t ask again. She stared at her husband and waited for the answer.
“I promised my mother not to tell anyone. Not you. Not Laura,” he said, finally. “Do you remember when my mother wanted to see me alone, when we went for the funeral?”
She remembered. She’d felt guilty because it had annoyed her—they were about to go to bed after a long, emotional day.
“It was late at night. After we’d gone to sleep…” Rosie began. But Joe interrupted her.
“She came to our room and asked me to join her in my father’s study. I had already received the note from his lawyer, and she knew it. She was hysterical. Begged me not to tell anyone—not my siblings, and not you or Laura. She said she’d suffered a lifetime of humiliation and she wanted to bury it along with my father. She begged me, Rosie,” Joe said, pleading now for her to understand. “I felt I owed it to her after what my father had done.”
Rosie wanted to scream. She wanted to whale her fists into people who were not in the room—her mother, her father. Joe’s father. And even Joe’s mother. Yes, she had been a victim of her husband’s infidelity and lies. But she had chosen to suffer the humiliation that she described. That was her choice. She had no right to poison her son’s marriage.
“How long did he know?” Rosie asked. She could see them all—the “grown-ups” on their street. She used to think they were wise. She used to watch the women and imagine herself in their shoes one day, married with a house full of children. She had looked to them to show her how to be a woman, even when she pretended not to. This thought now disgusted her.
“He knew when your mother got pregnant. Their affair began six months before. Your mother told him she had stopped sleeping with your father.”
“Jesus Christ!” Rosie exploded. “He put that in a note? A note he left with his lawyer?”
Joe shook his head. “My mother told me that part. That was also how your father knew—they had grown distant after you were born. Tired and busy. He probably thought nothing of it—until your mother was suddenly pregnant. I can see how that happens. Can’t you? After Mason, things changed between us.”
“Not like that! What are you saying, Joe?”
“Nothing, Rosie. I’m just trying to make sense of it. I’m trying to understand how these people we looked up to, people who raised us, who toasted us at our wedding and were there when Mason was born—those people. I’m trying to make sense of what they did.”
Rosie let her thoughts settle before she said things she couldn’t take back. This would have been a hard secret for Joe to carry. She knew that. Still, if Laura hadn’t gone missing, she may never have known. She’d seen no signs of the distress Joe was now saying he’d felt. No signs that he was holding on to such a monumental secret.
And that was exactly how those people had held on to theirs.
People could hide. And hide well. Even the people you love the most.
“Why did you tell Laura?” Rosie asked again. He still hadn’t answered.
It was not easy to look at him when he did.
“I decided to tell Laura first. I couldn’t keep the secret any longer. I knew she’d struggled with your father, and with every other man in her life. This information—it felt important. It made sense why your father always favored you. And why he started cheating on your mother. And why he left.”
“And you didn’t think it was important information for me? I had to live through the affairs. I had to listen to my mother crying. Do you have any idea how much she told us? Knowing we would feel sorry for her? How could you not know this would help me—to find peace with my father leaving us?”
Now she saw it. For the first time since Laura had been home, she saw a trace of guilt.
“I had no idea those things still bothered you.”
“Well then, I guess you don’t really know me. How is that possible?”
Now he was silent. Rosie pushed on.
“So you told Laura because you thought you could help her with her problems?”
“Yes. And I told her first, Rosie. I thought we should make sure before deciding whether to tell you—get a DNA test done, which we did.”
“Why last summer?”
; “Because it was unbearable to keep this secret. And because she told you she was talking to a therapist, right? And that she had a boyfriend who loved her. She had support to help her deal with it. I didn’t know if that chance would come again. So I went to the city and I took her to lunch. And I told her.”
“What about all the calls and texts…?”
“She had questions, just like you. And we had to arrange for the DNA test, and then wait for the results, which was hard. She wanted me to tell you. She begged me to tell you, or to give her permission to tell you herself. She wanted to be able to talk to you about it, Rosie. You are the only person she’s ever really trusted. But I was scared of how you might look at me. If it would change things between us. And then Laura fell apart and moved back home and the fear grew—we’ve been holding Laura together for weeks. It didn’t seem like the best time to drop this bombshell too.”
Rosie felt her throat close tight. Goddamn it, she thought. She did not want to cry. She did not want to feel anything but anger for all of them. Her mother for a lifetime of lies, even as she saw her girls suffering. And Joe for keeping this from her. And Laura … she wanted to hate Laura right now. Everything was always about Laura. Poor, sad Laura. Hurt Laura. Broken Laura. And now, missing Laura.
“Does Gabe know?” Rosie asked, suddenly wondering if he was another traitor.
Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t tell him and Laura promised not to.”
“I can’t believe this,” Rosie said. “I can’t believe any of this is happening.”
The door opened. Conway was there now. And Rosie could tell from his demeanor that he did not have good news.
“What? What’s happened?” she demanded.
Conway sat down at the head of the table. He slid a piece of paper, a black-and-white photograph, in between Rosie and Joe.
Joe turned it slightly so he could see what it was.
“Who is that?” he asked.
But Rosie knew. It was Jonathan Fields. Buck or Billy. Or Edward Rittle. Take your pick.
He was in the hallway of his apartment building, stopped in front of his door—the door she had been pounding on. The door she’d walked through, certain she’d find her sister behind it.